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THE DEVIL’S SLIDE, WEBER CAÑON.—This great natural curiosity is in Weber Cañon, about forty miles north of Salt Lake City. It is composed of two parallel walls of white sandstone, thrown up by some ancient convulsion of the earth, which stand out in bold contrast with the dark red sandstone of the hill. The “Slide” is nearly 800 feet in length, the walls rising to a varying height of twenty to forty feet above the general surface of the hill. A few feet to the left of the “Slide” there is another wall of similar formation, but almost covered by the accumulated washings of centuries. It is a pity that so remarkable a curiosity should have received so profane an appellation; but we presume there would be no regrets if the devil should be required to take a hasty run down the top of the ragged and jutting walls of his famous slide. ]
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[Illustration: TEA-POT ROCK, GREEN RIVER.]
It is a little more than one hundred miles from Pocatello to Shoshone Station, at which point we left the train, and by private conveyance struck across the lava fields, a distance of twenty-five miles due south, over the dustiest wagon-road that mortal ever traveled. The way is like a switch-back, up and down over sharp waves of lava, with desolation and discomfort obtrusive companions, and nothing rising above the dull undulations except a purplish tint in the horizon, marking with faint intimation a range of mountains one hundred miles away in Utah. For more than four hours we traversed this wearying stretch of parched and begrimed desert, without a sign of the river, until at length turning the base of a higher ridge we came suddenly upon the brink of a tremendous chasm, and there, 1,200 feet below our feet, was the river which we had journeyed so far to view. Long before reaching this objective point, we had heard a deep, rumbling noise that seemed to emanate from the earth’s internals, but now, with astounded sense of the awful, we beheld the cause. There before us was the vexed waters of a large river pouring over two precipices, the first 82 feet and the second 210 feet high, producing by the final plunge a colossal caldron, from which the mists rose up in boiling clouds that ever and anon hid the falls from sight.